A blog about hacking, but really more in a golfish sense.

The phases of iPhone ownership, the beginning

Mon, Jul 20, 2009 5:16 PM
in

For me, it began in December of 2007. Anyone who reads this blog or has stumbled across it (as a surprising number have, unless there's a bot out there relentlessly searching for my post on the Best App Ever) knows that I'm a fan. I started off as a casual appreciator of the iPhone, and have since proceeded to jettison a lifetime of loyal MS-DOS/Windows computing in favor of being a blogging, Mac toting dork. I'm not ashamed. My personal productivity has skyrocketed over the last 18 months, due almost exclusively to the tectonic shift in mindset brought about by my consumer relationship with the House of Jobs. And now, for your enjoyment (I hope), I present the emotional cycle of iPhone ownership.

Prehistory

It started off for me simply enough. I'd been a Cingular customer-cum AT&T customer since the dawn of cell phone use (for me). I'd been through a few phones over the years, most notably the old bricky Nokia that worked great and only did that one thing. I was perfectly happy for a number of years, but eventually I was seduced. I wanted something with a bit more style, more pizazz. I'd been reading the Motorola Razr PR for a while, and thought that perhaps it'd make me happier, what with it's flippy coolness and it's camera. It even held the promise of being a music player, though a cursory glance could've shown a lack of a headphone jack or any real internal storage. I didn't care!! I was leaving the droll stability of the good thing I'd had with Nokia.

You can tell where this is headed. The camera sucked. The phone dropped calls all the time. The flip thing bothered me as much as I always knew it would. It wouldn't even let you set your own ringtones from your own music that you already freaking owned. It was extremely uncomfortable against your ear. It would connect to the crap ringtone store spontaneously and download the new NeYo tune for me. Repeatedly. Finally after less than 6 months, the thing just died altogether. Actually, I snapped it in half one night, so I guess you could say I terminated it, with extreme prejudice. This was about two weeks before Noah was due, so obviously I needed a new phone pronto.

I'd already seen Jimmy hanging out with it. He sent me an email with the signature at the bottom reading Sent from my iPhone. What a dork. I was intrigued...

Phase One - Infatuation

It was a rainy December day. I had a notion that since I'd just re-upped my Cingular contract months before, the new contract discount wouldn't be applying to me on this day. The suspicion was confirmed by the (very cool and helpful) dude at the store. A new Razr would cost me $379.

Or I could just get an iPhone for $20 more.

The first week was a revelation. The mere act of checking my email and being done with it in less time than it took my POSVRPC (Piece of $h!t, Vista-running PC) to even reach the first splash screen on booting up was like a dream come true. I immediately regretted my purchase of the POSVRPC only two weeks earlier, as the iPhone could easily get me through the relatively gig-light winter. I wrote a blog on the iPhone within days on MySpace - old-school - praising Apple as the "Barry Bonds of product design - every swing, out of the park". This was before the steroid allegations really came to light, but the comparison is probably still apropos.

I'd never bought an iPod, so having music to listen to was another big one. I'm sorry if I've written about all this before, but the real winner was when Noah was born and I had pictures emailed to the family within minutes.

The contacts and the calendar? I'd actually bought a Palm Pilot in college, deep in my freelance gigger days, but couldn't make myself carry it around all the time, which seriously negated it's effectiveness. In short, I started to see that if I couldn't get my life together with an iPhone, I was hopeless.